793.94/2176
Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Castle) of a Conversation With the Japanese Ambassador (Debuchi)
The Ambassador asked me whether I knew what the proposal of the League would be in the Manchurian matter. I told him that I could not possibly have any more idea as to this than he had. He said that he was afraid that the League would insist or try to insist on a neutral commission; that this would be taken in Japan as an affront to the national honor and that it could not possibly be accepted by his Government.
He said that his Government, according to the morning paper, has at last become united and that he takes as very important the statement of the Minister of War that he has definitely ordered cessation of any advances in Manchuria. In answer to a question [Page 25] from me he said that undoubtedly Baron Shidehara had also had to back down to a certain extent in accepting the Manchurian situation as it exists, but that the statement of the Minister of War showed that calmer counsel had prevailed. He said that certainly the civil element of the government, as well as the military would oppose any order from the League to submit to a neutral commission. He said that it was feared furthermore that the League might ask a definite promise from Japan immediately to withdraw its troops to within the railway zone or to do so within a specified number of days. He said that he felt that to sign a blank check of this kind might be impossible.
In considering these possibilities he said that his mind reverted more and more to the Shantung negotiations in Washington and that he felt something along these lines might create a way out of the situation. He referred to Article 3 of the Shantung treaty,41 which established a joint Chinese-Japanese Commission for the withdrawal of Japanese troops in Shantung and to Article 10 which stated that the Japanese troops would be out of Shantung, if possible, within three months and certainly within six months. He said that during the illness of Baron Shidehara he had himself sat in the negotiations which resulted in the treaty and that he had also been on the Chinese-Japanese Commission which brought about the evacuation of Shantung. He said that he believed a suggestion on the part of the League for similar negotiations in the present instance might be successful. I pointed out that in what he had said he had omitted one point. This was, that the Chinese were brought to accept direct negotiations on the understanding that neutral observers would be present. I said that a similar case might arise if the League should make the suggestion today and asked him whether Japan would be willing to carry on such negotiation in the presence of observers. He said that that was a point which he had been studying very carefully; that at the time of the Washington Conference Japanese public opinion had been so excited over all the other questions which were being discussed, that the Shantung question was more or less incidental and that, therefore, the question of observers had not made any particular impression in Japan; that at the present time the entire Japanese nation was thinking about the Manchurian affair and that to accept observers in direct negotiations might be a hard pill to swallow. I told him that I recognized this but that I nevertheless felt that whatever decision was arrived at, it would inevitably mean compromise and the giving up by both parties of something which they wanted. If in this case China wanted a neutral commission that it would be a far greater thing for China to give up [Page 26] the neutral commission and accept direct negotiation than it would be for Japan to add observers to direct negotiations. The Ambassador said that he fully realized this and that he believed there was real possibility that a solution could be worked out along these lines. Re said, however, that the quality of the observers would be very important; that the League of Nations meant nothing to the Japanese and that they would not be interested in observers appointed by the League of Nations, whereas they felt that observers in Washington in 1922, representing Great Britain and America, really meant something. (The fact that Baron Shidehara brought up the Shantung negotiations with Mr. Neville more or less incidentally42 and that that has been followed here by a very much fuller explanation on the part of the Ambassador, would suggest to me that this is obviously the line on which Japan is thinking.)
- Foreign Relations, 1922, vol. i, p. 948.↩
- See telegram No. 182, Oct. 12, 1931, from the Chargé in Japan, p. 21.↩